3 Getting Started

If you got this version of CC Mode with Emacs or XEmacs, it should
work just fine right out of the box. Note however that you might not
have the latest CC Mode release and might want to upgrade your copy
(see below).

You should probably start by skimming through the entire Commands chapter
(see Commands) to get an overview of CC Mode's capabilities.

After trying out some commands, you may dislike some aspects of
CC Mode's default configuration. Here is an outline of how to
change some of the settings that newcomers to CC Mode most often
want to change:

c-basic-offset

This Lisp variable holds an integer, the number of columns CC Mode
indents nested code. To set this value to 6, customize
c-basic-offset or put this into your .emacs:

(setq c-basic-offset 6)

The (indentation) style

The basic “shape” of indentation created by CC Mode—by default,
this is gnu style (except for Java and AWK buffers). A list of
the available styles and their descriptions can be found in
Built-in Styles. A complete specification of the CC Mode
style system, including how to create your own style, can be found in
the chapter Styles. To set your style to linux, either
customize c-default-style or put this into your .emacs:

Normally, when you type “punctuation” characters such as ‘;’ or
‘{’, CC Mode instantly reindents the current line. This can
be disconcerting until you get used to it. To disable electric
indentation in the current buffer, type C-c C-l. Type the same
thing to enable it again. To have electric indentation disabled by
default, put the following into your .emacs file1:

(setq-default c-electric-flag nil)

Details of this and other similar “Minor Modes” appear in the
section Minor Modes.

Making the <RET> key indent the new line

The standard Emacs binding for <RET> just adds a new line. If you
want it to reindent the new line as well, rebind the key. Note that
the action of rebinding would fail if the pertinent keymap didn't yet
exist—we thus need to delay the action until after CC Mode has
been loaded. Put the following code into your .emacs:

This example demonstrates the use of a very powerful CC Mode (and
Emacs) facility, the hook. The use of CC Mode's hooks is described
in CC Hooks.

All these settings should occur in your .emacsbefore
any CC Mode buffers get loaded—in particular, before any call of
desktop-read.

As you get to know the mode better, you may want to make more
ambitious changes to your configuration. For this, you should start
reading the chapter Config Basics.

If you are upgrading an existing CC Mode installation, please see
the README file for installation details. In particular, if
you are going to be editing AWK files, README describes how to
configure your (X)Emacs so that CC Mode will supersede the obsolete
awk-mode.el which might have been supplied with your (X)Emacs.
CC Mode might not work with older versions of Emacs or XEmacs. See
the CC Mode release notes at http://cc-mode.sourceforge.net
for the latest information on Emacs version and package compatibility
(see Updating CC Mode).

— Command: c-version

You can find out what version of CC Mode you are using by visiting a C
file and entering M-x c-version RET. You should see this message in
the echo area: